Bookertoo

Latest posts by Bookertoo

No matter how many birds your cats appear to catch, feeding them saves far, far more - the RSPB has a good study about this, I don't know if it still on their web site. We always had cats and bird feeders, they soon get used to each other, after a bit the cat didn't worry the birds and the birds kept an eye or two on the cats and both were OK with it. It is visiting cats that use the garden as a loo about which 4711 was asking ( interesting name - very secretive!). The plastic carpet spikes about which I wrote do no-ones paws any harm, the cats just cannot dig there, and that keeps them from bothering, ditto the holly and berberis cuttings.

cyclamen as well, the spring varieties would look stunnning. Difficult place as the tree is taking so much nutrition from the area. You could use pots or troughs there, place them when they are at their best and take them away for a rest when they are over, replacing with others. Alot of work though, for which you may not have time.

dear gardening fanatic - your pictures are excellent, thank you. Is the green tubing made of plasti or metal If plastic, the squirrels will have bitten through it in the first couple of days, and will have lifted the roof before I get the back door closed, I have to wire everything on to the feeders. I don't object to many birds, but magpies and pigeons I'm afraid are off my radar altogether, the damage they do is quite extraordinary. I do have different types of feeders around, it is just this one with the fat balls (which aren't balls at all, but narrow tubes as I set the mixture in small plastic drinks bottles - that size just fits the peanut feeder) has become impossible, being completely cleared byt he squirrels and magpies in about 10 minutes - and I cannot keep that rate of feeding up with the best will in the world - and as far as squirrels and pigeons are concerned, let alone magpies, I don't have the best will in the world. I know these caged feeders are sold everywhere, so they must be used, just not by my birds. They are using all the others that the magpies and pigeons cannot perch on - yet. The squirrel gets on there and just sucks the seed down like a small vaccuum cleaner - you can literally see it falling down the tube, at a kilo at a time, that is beyond me too - hence I want the small birds to use the caged feeder - maybe when they get hungry enough in poorer weather they might.

Dahlias went out of 'fashion' a few years ago for some reason, why I do not know, they are wonderful garden plants and good in pots too. I left mine in the ground till the dreadful winter of a couple of years ago when we nearly all lost the lot - once they are frost blackened, lift them, dry them off, keep in a box of slightly damp sand until the spring, when you can start them off early and take cuttings, getting lots of new plants for free - now that's always a good thing huh?

There are so many to chose from, the reality is that you can grow anything in a pot as long as you are willing to do for it all the things it cannot do for itself when in the ground. Provided you are haooy to do that, then the world is your oyster - as it were! Do you want evergreen? If you don't mind the smell, privet makes a wonderful pot plant, the bees and butterflies love the flowers, when grown as a hedge it gets cut and doesn't often flower. Get a nice tree book from the library and look at that, I would not recommend growing a tree that wants to be 100 foot tall in a pot (though I do have an oak tree that is 12 foot high in a pot, but I'd not do it again), look for trees that are naturally small, don't need alot of work and will give you the shape you want. Things like willow will grow fine but you will be for ever pruning it, the new smaller buddleas might be nice and smell sweet - mallows are good - the list is nearly endless.

I'm gradually taking my little brown money envelopes around the garden and gathering seeds, poppies especially, had some really lovely pink ones this year. which I'd like to see again, of course they may not flower true, but they will flower. I shall keep the envelopes in a tin in the shed (mice!), and sow them where I want them next year - that's really all there should be to it.

Agree re root stock. If it was a grafted tree, and most of them are - then track the new shoots down to the base and remove them as far below the soil as you can. Keep an eye on the base & remove any suckers you see coming out from there in the future. If it was not a grafted tree, then I am at a loss .........